Collaborative Research: The Effects of Mating Structure on Phenotypic Variation and its Inheritance

当代生态学的理论基础 遗传学主要是从文献中借用的定量 遗传学和作物育种和驯化 动物 一些根本问题仍有待解决 在定量遗传学方法从 从植物和动物繁殖到不受控制的世界， 自然种群可以实现。 的一个最严重的 将定量遗传学方法应用于自然 这种方法的一个假设是， 研究中的种群成员在 随机 这是一个不太可能实现的假设 在大多数自然种群中。 当有复杂形式的 遗传变异，如不同基因间的相互作用， 基因座，违反随机交配的假设可能有 对进化的潜在影响， 发生. 本研究将以车前为材料， 种群细分和局部交配的作用 影响群体中遗传变异的估计， 以及选择带来进化的潜力 变化 基本方法是比较遗传方差 通过使用相似性估计总体中的成分 在亲戚中，父母是根据他们的 在自然界中交配的概率， 随机选择亲本时的遗传方差分量 from the population人口at large大. 如果对基因的估计 两种交配方式下的方差分量不同 这将表明，交配结构可以有一个强大的 对进化的潜在影响。 如果 它们与基于局部交配的估计不同， 预计会更大，将给出最好的预测， 对选择的回应。

The theoretical underpinnings of contemporary ecological genetics are mainly borrowed from the literature on quantitative genetics and the breeding of crop plants and domesticated animals. A number of fundamental issues remain to be resolved before the mapping of quantitative genetic methods from the realm of plant and animal breeding to the less controlled world of natural populations can be accomplished. One of the most serious difficulties in applying quantitative genetic methods to natural populations is that one of the assumptions of this approach is that the members of the population under study are mating at random. This is an assumption that is unlikely to be fulfilled in most natural populations. When there are complex forms of genetic variation, such as interactions among genes at different loci, violation of the assumption of random mating may have profound effects on the potential for evolutionary changes to occur. This research will use Plantago lanceolata to examine the role of population subdivision and localized mating in influencing estimates of the genetic variation in a population, and the potential for selection to bring about evolutionary change. The basic approach will be to compare genetic variance components estimated in a population by using the resemblance among relatives when the parents are chosen based on their probability of mating in the nature with similar estimates of genetic variance components when the parents are chosen at random from the population at large. If estimates of the genetic variance components under these two mating systems are different it will indicate that the mating structure can have a strong influence on the potential for evolutionary change to occur. If they are different the estimates based on localized mating, which are expected to be larger, will give the best predictions of the response to selection.